Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Riley
Maverick swings the front door open, plopping his backpack down on the floor. His eyes roam around the room until they land on me.
I smile at him, peeking at him over the couch.
“You’re actually here,” he says, like he doesn’t really believe what he’s seeing.
“What? Did you think I was lying or something?” Abby says, stepping into the house behind her son.
He glances at her over his shoulder. “Kind of.” He twists back to face me. “You came back.”
“I did,” I say, standing from my seat. I round the couch, so he and I are only a few feet apart.
I barely have time to crouch down before he crashes into me. “I knew you would keep your promise.”
I squeeze him tight because I missed him so much. I missed how he sounds like an adult trapped in a tiny body. I forgot all his random facts that come from nowhere.
But more than anything, I missed the sweet boy who stole a piece of my heart by just being him.
“Thanks for having faith in me,” I whisper.
He pulls back, giving me a slight shrug. “I figured the probability was in my favor.”
Abby snorts from where she’s standing. I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. This kid is hilarious, and he has no idea. His humor is so unintentional. It kills me.
He gives me one more quick hug. “I’m glad you’re back. Maybe everyone will be less cranky now,” he says, walking over to his dad and uncles, who are all waiting patiently in the living room.
“One can only hope,” Abby says. She gives me a wide grin when I stand and walk over to her. Her arms band around me. “They’ve all been crabby as shit since you left.”
I laugh quietly, hugging her back.
She pulls away enough to look me in the eye. “You good?”
“Getting there,” I say with a nod. “Thanks for… everything.”
Abby and I stayed in touch while I was gone. We didn’t text every day, but I can confidently say we are real friends.
She waves me off. “You don’t need to thank me, just be good to… all of them.”
I glance into the living room. All three guys are intently watching Maverick, who is telling them an animated story about a dream he had last night about a lizard and a bald eagle.
I’m smiling like a fool when I turn back to face Abby. “I plan on it.”
She gives me a nod. “Mav, come give me a hug. I have to get to the hospital.”
He runs over, giving his mom a big hug. She kisses the top of his head, and he runs back to the living room. He crashes into Finn, making him grunt in fake agony.
“Don’t corrupt our son now that you have your woman back,” Abby says with her hand on the doorknob.
Cole rolls his eyes. “Bye, Abby.”
“Love you,” she says, opening the door.
Cole shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah. Love you, too. Go save some people’s lives or something.”
Her laugh is cut off when the door clicks closed.
My ass hasn’t even landed on the couch yet when Maverick locks eyes with me and asks, “Are you my dad, Uncle Finn, and Uncle Theo’s girlfriend?”
I whip my head to Cole. I don’t know what Maverick actually knows about our relationship, and I definitely don’t know how Cole feels about telling him.
I’m going to let him take the reins on this one.
“How would you feel about it if that were the case?” Cole asks, somehow keeping a straight face. On the flip side, I’m staring slack-jawed.
Maverick smiles, and it’s adorable as shit. It’s one of the rare moments when I’m reminded that he really is just a six-year-old kid.
“It would make me really happy because I think it would make you guys happy.”
This kid.
“She makes all of you smile.” He pauses for a second, focusing on his dad. “Well… since you decided to stop glaring at her all the time, but even then, I knew you liked her.”
Now it’s Cole’s turn to look stunned.
“So, are you?” Mav asks again.
Cole shakes his head. “Yeah, bud. We are.”
“Yes,” Mav says, thrusting his fist in the air.
Cole and I argued for a solid hour about him giving me the main bedroom, but he finally gave in. He still isn’t happy about all my stuff finding a permanent home in the room that was mine two months ago.
I slide my hands on either side of his grumpy face. “Cole.”
“Yes.”
“I was sleeping in this room every night when I fell in love with Finn and Theo… and I finally let myself accept I had been in love with you for years.” His face softens, so I continue. “For now, I want to stay here. This is where it all started, and I just… I want to hold onto that.”
His forehead falls to mine. “Okay, sweetheart,” is all he says. Then, he’s back to folding my clothes and arranging them in the dresser.
“You could paint the walls,” Finn says, breaking down the last of the boxes.
My eyes roam around the small room. “I could,” I say with a slight shrug. I’m not going to, though.
This is the room they opened up to me when I had nowhere else to go. This is the room where I thought of nothing but the three of them night after night.
I’m sure in time we’ll figure out other sleeping arrangements. I know Cole isn’t going to completely drop this argument anytime soon.
He and I might have grown a lot individually over the last eight years, but bickering is still a major part of our relationship’s DNA. I think it always will be.
I smile, thinking about both of us with gray hair and arguing about what kind of frozen mac and cheese to buy. Throw in Finn’s jokes that make me laugh until my stomach hurts and Theo’s calming presence that eases my worries, and it sounds pretty close to my dream come true.
It takes thirty more minutes to get all my stuff unpacked and situated in the space that temporarily seemed like mine. Now it’s the place where I want to let my roots grow deep into the ground.
The guys carry all the broken-down boxes to the garage, and I make my way down the stairs a few minutes later.
Maverick is sitting on the couch with his game controller in hand. Stepping closer, I see he’s typing an email to log into the system.
At first, I’m amused by the scowl on his face as his eyes search around the keyboard on the screen, then my eyes fall on the email on the screen.
My feet stutter to a stop.
I would know that email address anywhere. I’ve thought of it frequently over the last several months, wondering who sent me the anonymous tip email.
My eyes dart between the screen and the back of Maverick’s head. Is the email Mav’s? His dad’s? Finn’s or Theo’s?
“Why does your face look like that?” Cole asks as all the guys walk back in from the garage.
My mind is a whirl of possibilities, so I just stare at him, wide-eyed. Worry twists his features as he crosses the room with a few quick strides.
His hands landing on my shoulders is a jolt to my system.
“Is that your email?” I ask, pointing to the screen where Maverick is still typing in the password.
He looks utterly confused as he looks at the screen. “No, that’s Mav’s. He insisted on setting all of it up on his own when he got the system for Christmas last year.”
So, that means…
His hands move up to cup my cheeks. “Sweetheart, what’s going on? You’re kind of scaring me.”
Over Cole’s shoulder, I see Theo and Finn stepping in close with matching looks of concern on their faces.
“It was Mav,” I say quietly.
Cole’s head pulls back a little. “What was?”
“The anonymous tip I got that brought me here to do the podcast episode… came from that email.”
Cole’s eyes widen, then his head jerks to his son. “Mav.”
His small fingers move over the controller, pausing the game that he’s now started. “Yeah?” he says, looking at us over the couch.
He looks kind of shocked to see all of us standing there.
Cole’s hand falls from my face as he turns to face Maverick fully. “Did you send an email to Riley? Or her business, I guess?”
The boy’s face goes pale.
“Did you?” Cole questions again when Mav doesn’t say anything.
Maverick swallows. His eyes look over to me in apology. “Yeah.”
“Why?” Cole says, moving his head slightly from side to side. He can’t wrap his brain around why his son would do that, and honestly, I can’t either.
“I was hoping she would come to town, and it would make you happy,” he says, eyes locked on his dad as he moves to kneel on the couch.
Cole looked confused before. Now, he seems just plain baffled. “How did you even know about Riley?”
Maverick’s eyes dart down to his hands that he’s twisting together.
“Your journals,” Finn says. We all turn to look at him, but Finn is staring at Mav. “That’s how you figured it out. Huh?”
Mav stares at Finn for a beat before nodding.
“You read my journals?” Cole asks.
Mav looks like he’s going to cry. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know why you looked sad sometimes when you thought I was busy doing something else. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, or I could do something different to make you happy.”
Cole’s features soften slightly. “You have never done anything to make me unhappy, bud.”
Mav nods. “I figured that out, but I also learned you still loved someone named Riley even though you really, really didn’t want to.”
He wrote about me… like that? He was still in love with me, even when he hated me.
“You wrote about seeing her face in an ad, and it made your heartbeat erratically, like it always did when you saw her. It also made you irrationally angry.” He says the last part with a little smirk.
He’s on a roll now, and the story pours out of him.
“I did some research and figured out who she was. I was at the coffee shop with Mom, and I heard Martha and Louise talking about all these couples in town, where there was one lady and three guys. That seemed like a pretty good love story, so I sent the idea to the email from the website.”
We all stand there staring at him. Nothing moves other than the slow blinks of everyone’s eyes.
“How?” Cole asks. “Just how?”
Mav shrugs, like it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
Finn’s laugh is quiet at first, then he can’t control it anymore. It burst from him. Soon, we’re all laughing alongside him.
What else are you going to do? He’s six, and he did all of that.
Cole picks Mav up, suspending him in mid-air in a bear hug. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Mav says. He’s laughing, but he still seems slightly confused by the change in everyone’s demeanor.
Mav’s feet hit the ground as Cole crouches in front of him. “I’m in awe of everything you did to piece this all together, but it doesn’t excuse you from invading something personal to me.”
Tears start to well in his eyes as he stares at his dad. “I know. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“I believe you,” Cole says, wiping a tear that falls down Mav’s cheek.
“I’ll turn the video game off,” Mav says.
“That seems fair. No video games today or tomorrow, and we’ll call it good,” Cole says.
He’s such a good dad.
“Are you mad at me?” Mav asks, looking so vulnerable and small.
A smile pulls at the corners of Cole’s lips. “How could I really be mad when you brought the love of my life back to me?”
My heart squeezes painfully in my chest, but this time it isn’t from fear. It’s from all-consuming love that I know I wouldn’t be okay without.
That’s the joy of this, though. I don’t have to live without it. These men love me, all of me.
Mav bounds over, grabbing my hands. He looks up at me with hopeful eyes. “Does that mean you’re staying?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
His smile widens. “Mission accomplished.”
Fuck. I love this kid. I crouch down, pulling him in for a hug. I’m probably hugging him too tight, but I can’t help it. I love him so fucking much.
“Can we play UNO?” he asks.
“Fu…” Finn’s voice trails off as he corrects himself mid-word. “Funny, yeah.”
Mav looks at him like he has four heads. “That doesn’t even make sense. You could cuss. It isn’t like I’ve never heard a curse word before. I did read Dad’s journal.”
“Mav,” Cole says in warning.
His small features cringe. “Too soon?”
Finn snorts. “Just a tad, my man. Let’s go find those cards.” They disappear behind the closet door, searching through the stacks of games.
I grab Cole’s hand. “You wrote about me?”
“A big part of me might have hated you all those years, but some of that hate stemmed from my not being able to let you go. I never fell out of love with you. It was just clouded by everything else for a long time.”
“Is it wrong of me to say I’m glad he read them?”
“No,” he says, pulling me in close. “Because I feel the same way. It ultimately brought you back here, so that’s always going to be a good thing in my book.” He gives me a tender kiss that makes me feel to my bones how grateful he is for how everything has panned out.
We all make our way to the table. Theo pulls me onto his lap.
He might be able to see my cards, but I couldn’t care less. My head rests against the side of Theo’s while the other three work on dealing out the cards.
I let out a gentle sigh, taking in the scene. This, right here, is happiness to me. These are the people who mean the absolute world to me.
“It’s pretty perfect. Huh?” Theo says.
I nod, feeling tears well in my eyes. The level of love and belonging I feel in this moment is almost too much to bear.
“Yeah, it really is,” I say, knowing this is exactly where I want to be for the rest of my days, here with these four guys.
If I have them, everything else will be okay. I just know it.